History Main / ArtisticStimulation

* Author and counterculture figure Creator/KenKesey was a typical clean-cut, all-American jock... until he discovered LSD as a paid test subject in college. [[HilarityEnsues Hilarity ensued]]. His first book, ''Literature/OneFlewOverTheCuckoosNest'', was written while he worked night shifts at the local VA hospital's psych ward (a job he first took so he could access more LSD and other drugs), stoned out of his mind. His second novel, ''Sometimes A Great Notion'', was written on acid/pot/speed binges that would last thirty hours at a time. And then there was the bus...

WhatDoYouMeanItWasntMadeOnDrugs is when [[AudienceReactions viewers]] ''assume'' this of a particularly bizarre work.

In fiction, an artist, be he a writer, musician or painter, may be addicted to a drug. One of the conflicts in the work is usually the artist's struggle to escape the addiction. This was probably TruthInTelevision before it entered television, so it's probably just a stereotype that has come about from real-life artists using drugs.

See also MadArtist, JunkieProphet and (if only because it finishes off the triangle) MadOracle. An artist on prescription drugs might [[InvertedTrope go the other way]] and decide NoMedicationForMe.

--->'''Don''' ''*walking into the Creative lounge*'' I smell creativity!

* In the backstory of ''Series/{{Elementary}}'', Sherlock was a recreational drug user who liked to use drugs to keep his mind focused when solving cases. However, one case [[ItsPersonal became very personal to him]] and he started using more and more drugs in an attempt to solve it. This ended up having the opposite effect and his deductive skills took a nosedive. He was taken off the case and subsequently became a junkie. When the series starts he has finally managed to get clean and maintaining his sobriety is a big part of the show.

* ''VisualNovel/KatawaShoujo'' has the arm-less artist Rin Tezuka, who starts smoking with her boyfriend (and PlayerCharacter) Hisao when she fails to find enough inspiration for her art. It's a sign of her mounting stress as she is under pressured to make art for an upcoming exhibition, and in turn of her deteriorating mental state.

* ''WesternAnimation/TheSmurfs1981'' episode "The Lure Of The Orb" has a [[AddictiveMagic magic orb]] that's supposed to give heightened inspiration to whoever touches it, but in reality only gives a temporary boost of energy that leaves the user drained and addicted to its power. Poet was the first to use the orb in order to complete his spring pageant poem, from which he was able to write pages of verses, but after he was freed from the effects of the orb, Poet read what he wrote and was astonished with how the quality of his writing had suffered because of the orb. (Other users of the orb -- Painter, Harmony, Farmer, and Handy -- also realized that the quality of their work had suffered because of their addiction to the orb's magic.) He ends up scrapping the overly-long drug-created poem and writes a very short poem about how to deal with his problems, taking no more than an hour to create it before the pageant starts.

* Music/TheBeatles were often high during or in the near vicinity of creative endeavors. They used stimulants while they were in Hamburg so they could stay awake during ridiculously long sets, and occasionally dabbled in other substances (including a couple of brushes with pot). After Music/BobDylan offered the four of them pot under the mistaken notion that they were regular users (due to a miscommunication of all things...), they started smoking it incessantly. By all accounts they were constantly stoned while filming ''Film/{{Help}}''. In the spring of 1965 Music/JohnLennon and Music/GeorgeHarrison were introduced to acid by their dentist, who [[IntoxicationEnsues spiked their coffee with the stuff one night]], an incident memorialized in the song "Doctor Robert"; Music/RingoStarr followed shortly thereafter. By their second trip to America, they were fairly regular trippers (there's a famous story about how Creator/PeterFonda ruined their trip at a party they were throwing at their rental house in UsefulNotes/LosAngeles, which got turned into "She Said She Said" on ''Music/{{Revolver|Beatles Album}}''). Music/PaulMcCartney also took it up, but not until around ''[[Music/SgtPeppersLonelyHeartsClubBand Sgt. Pepper]]'', and he gave it up ''right'' before telling the press he ''used'' to take it... <sigh> John in particular loved LSD (he admitted to having written "I Am The Walrus" at least partially on two separate acid trips). At least two of Paul's songs ("Got To Get You Into My Life" and "Fixing a Hole") are most definitely about pot -- the former by [[WordOfGod Paul's admission,]] the latter because it's obvious; and odds are, any song from that era by Paul that looks like it's about pot is.

** Dylan has always been a bit cagey about his intoxicant use. As one writer put it, his main drug of choice has always been alcohol. He claimed in an interview that he briefly was addicted to heroin after arriving in New York, but he may have been making that up (in the same interview he claimed he also worked as a hustler in that period). We know he was an enthusiastic pot smoker during his folk years, and one reporter swears to God that Dylan once barged into Music/WillieNelson's tour bus with a gigantic blunt while the reporter was interviewing Nelson sometime in the 1990s or early 2000s. Reliable reports have him trying LSD a few times when it was still legal (around 1964), but comments he's made over the years indicate he wasn't all that impressed with it. He used amphetamines a lot in the 1965-66 period. Beyond that it's all conjecture.

* Music/CharlieParker, probably the biggest name to EVER appear in jazz, took more drugs than Keith Richards. When he died, the coroner estimated him, on the degradation of his body, to be in his sixties. He was thirty four.

* Music/SydBarrett was a heavy user of LSD. Unfortunately in his case this led to a permanent CreatorBreakdown and his career as a musician was essentially over by the time he turned 25.

* Music/KurtCobain of Music/{{Nirvana}} used heroin a lot. It was at least partially self medication for an unspecified stomach condition.

* [[Music/TheBeachBoys Brian Wilson]] first took LSD with a friend in 1964 - after some initial anxiety, he sat down and played what would eventually become ''California Girls'' - call it coincidence, but The Beach Boys music started to get more interesting and complex around this time.

* Subverted by Creator/RobertLouisStevenson - he happened to have been given drugs when suffering with a severe chest infection which simply had the side-effect of inducing hallucinations and convulsions; this inspired him to write JekyllAndHyde- not that he hallucinated the story as such, but he was fascinated later by how the drugs had made him feel like a separate personality.

* Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Thomas de Quincey, and most of the Romantic poets were known for their indulgence of the "hip" drugs of the day, from brandy and port to opium to laudanum (opium dissolved in liquor) to nitrous oxide (laughing gas). Coleridge wrote "Kubla Khan", after an opium trip and De Quincey wrote ''Confessions of an English Opium Eater'' as an anti-drug PSA after he finally sobered up. Unfortunately, the [[DoNotDoThisCoolThing beatific descriptions]] of the visions and sensations produced by opium found in the book was responsible for attracting a huge number of people to try the drug.
* Music/EltonJohn was addicted to cocaine, marijuana and alcohol (along with suffering through bulimia and sex addiction) from 1975 through entering a Chicago rehabilitation center (the only one he found that specialized in conquering all of his addictions at once) in 1990 to seek treatment. [[WordOfGod He claims]] that working on his first post-rehab album ''The One'' [[TroubledProduction was difficult at first]] as he was without the crutch of chemical dependency for the first time in ages.

* Similarly to Dick's example, famous Hungarian mathematician Paul Erdős[[note]]A well-known eccentric, the member of The Martians-- an informal club of Hungarian mathematicians and physicists in the US, which included such figures as John von Neumann and Leo Szillard, and the inspiration for Creator/StanislawLem's quip about "''nomadic scientists''".[[/note]] has always attributed his scientific success to amphetamines, [[FunctionalAddict which he used for much of his life]]. Having went sober on a dare once, the man then complained that while he was perfectly okay otherwise, without speed he couldn't think about mathematics ''at all''. On completing the wager, he is said to have quipped, "[[BadassBoast You just set back mathematics a month]]," and went right back to his habit.

* ''VisualNovel/KatawaShoujo'' has the arm-less artist Rin Tezuka, who is seen smoking with her boyfriend (and PlayerCharacter) Hisao in an attempt to get enough inspiration for her art. It's seen as a bad thing from the start, however, since she's getting increasingly stressed and her mental state starts deteriorating soon...